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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



HEREAFTER 

OR 

THE FUTURE LIFE 

According to Scienck and Faith, 
by 

REV. J. LAXKNAIRK, D.D., 
President of the Theological Seminary of Saint Di&. 

Adapted from the French 

BY 

REV. J. M. LELEU. 






ST. LOUIvS, MO. 1904. 
Published by B. HERDER. 

17 South Broadway. 



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NIHIL OBSTAT. 

Sti Iyiidovici, die 13. Augusti 1904. 

F. G. Hoiavkck, 
Censor Theologicus. 

IMPRIMATUR. 
Sti Ivudovici, die 14. Augusti 1904. 
►{< John J. Gi^knnon, 

Abp. St. L,ouis. 



Copyright, 1904, by Joseph Gummersbach. 



Becktold Printing and Book Mfg. Co., St. I^ouis, Mo. 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Introductory 5 

Chapter I. 
The Question. 
Its Importance. — An Appeal to Reason 

and to Faith 13 

Chapter II. 
The Hereafter in History. 
Before Christ.— After Christ.— Critical Dis- 
cussion on the Testimony of Nations ... 19 
Chapter III. 
Hereafter and the Human Soul. 
The Simplicity of the Soul. — Its Spiritual- 
ity —Its Immortality. — Activity of the Soul 

separated from the Body 29 

Chapter IV. 
Hereafter and Justice. 
What is Justice? — Insufficient Sanctions. — 
Necessity of a Future Life. — Neo-Stoicism of 
Kant. — False Conceptions of Justice ... 40 
Chapter V. 
Hereafter and the Divine Plan. 
General View. — The Law of Providence. — 
Aspirations of the Soul. — Metempsychosis. — 

Pantheism and Immortality 51 

Chapter VI. 
Hereafter and Punishment. 
Necessary Conclusion of the Moral Order. 
— Sanction of the Law. — Helf and the Good- 
ness of God. — Conditional Immortality. — 

The Reason of Hell 66 

Chapter VII. 

Hereafter and Reward. 

The Philosophy and the End of Man. — 

The Heaven of the Gospel.— The Light of 

Glory. — The Happiness of Heaven .... 8? 

Conclusion 103 



XNTEODUCTOEY 

"He who fights, " says Huxley, "for 
moral truth in this world of anguish and 
sin is certainly stronger when he believes 
that sooner or later a vision of peace and 
happiness will take hold of his being. So 
also the one who works on the top of a 
mountain is more courageous when he sees 
awaiting him on the other side of the rocks 
and snows, his home and rest. If this fate 
were founded on a solid basis, certainly all 
mankind would cling to it just as obsti- 
nately as the sailor, when in danger of 
being drowned, clings to the buoy." 

Notwithstanding these words of the 
overpraised agnostic, we hold that this 
future fate is founded on a solid basis and 
that we must admit its reality, unless we 
refuse to assent to all the crucial criterions 
which are the ordinary test of certitude and 
which are recognized by every philosopher. 

There is a hereafter for the soul because, 
under every clime, all peoples have believed 
(5) 



6 HEREAFTER. 

and do believe this dogma. Some so- 
called free-thinkers vainly tried to prove 
the falsehood of this universal belief. 
Even Herbert Spencer, "the doctor of the 
unknowable/ 7 has been obliged to confess 
that: "Among the tribes who say that death 
is annihilation we yet commonly find such 
inconsequent beliefs as those of some 
Africans visited by Schweinfurth, who 
shunned certain caves from dread of the 
evil spirits of fugitives who had died in 
them." * Nowhere has total belief in 
annihilation been found and all the ac 
counts of historians, travelers and poets — 
these three great reflectors of the nations 7 
ideas — corroborate this assertion. It is 
sufficient to refer to H. B Bancroft, in his 
"History of the native races of the Pacific 
States of America," Sir J. Barrow in his 
"Travels into the interior of Southern 
Africa," A. Bastian in his "Afrikanische 
Eeisen," J. L. Burckhardt in his "Notes 
on the Bedouins and Wahabys," H. Brit- 
ton in his "Loloma," F. Boyle in his 

1 Principles of Sociology, XIV, 99, 



INTRODUCTORY. 7 

" Ad ventures among the Dyaks, 77 G. W. 
Earl in his "Eastern Seas, 7 ' Sir G. Grew 
in his "Polynesian Mythology 77 etc., etc. 

There is a hereafter for the soul, because 
our soul is simple and spiritual. Neither 
the simple nor the spiritual can be dis- 
aggregated since they are not an aggregate. 
As Leibnitz says, "it is as impossible for 
the soul to become divided as for the circle 
to become a square: this is against the 
essence of things. 77 He therefore con- 
cludes that "the soul is naturally im- 
mortal. 77 Such, too, is our conclusion. Of 
course, we admit that the soul which can- 
not be destroyed, may be annihilated by 
God, but further we shall see that His 
divine attribute of justice prevents Him 
doing this. And by the way, we can say 
with truth, that there is no example of any 
thing having been annihilated. * 

There is a hereafter for the soul, because 
the human soul, unlike the animal 7 s soul, 

1 Annihilation would be tantamount to the 
acknowledging of a failure in the creating of the 
subject at hand. Cfr. C. Mano, The Problem 
of Life, 



8 HEREAFTER. 

is life independent of the body, it is life 
coming directly from God, life uniting all 
the particles of the body. Why should the 
soul perish when the body dies ? The soul 
being the source and principle of life, its 
death would be unexplainable. I have a 
handful of sand in my hand : the sand flies 
away, my hand remains. So with the soul. 
When the body dies, the soul subsists. 

There is a hereafter for the soul, because 
justice claims this privilege: too often 
wickedness is honored here below and 
virtue is despised: unless we admit that 
God is unjust, we must necessarily admit 
for the soul a life beyond the grave, when 
compensation shall be made. 

"How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost 
thou not judge and revenge our blood on 
them that dwell on the earth V 

To this supreme interrogation, which we 
read in the Apocalypse, an answer will be 
given. 

The hour shall strike when justice shall 
begin, justice as unavoidable, sacred, 
necessary as God Himself. 



INTRODUCTORY. 9 

God is Truth : truth radiantly has to be 
manifested, confounding all sophists and 
liars. 

God is Love: love has to appear to 
crush the ungrateful, 

God is Justice: retributive justice has 
to vanquish the impious. 

To sum up with Emerson, let us say: 
"Our dissatisfaction with any other solu- 
tion is the blazing evidence of immortal- 
ity." 

But as the philosopher of Concord says 
elsewhere: "We are much better believers 
in immortality than we can give grounds 
for. Its real evidence is too subtle or is 
higher than we can write down in proposi- 
tions." 

Strong as are our arguments, sufficient 
as they are to constitute a solid basis, our 
light is not adequate, that is to say, we are 
not adequately satisfied with its rays, as 
we are, when we see that two and two are 
four, or as when we prove, that the short- 
est way to go from a point to an other is 
by the straight line. 



10 HEREAFTER. 

But what follows from this ? That the 
proof is not sufficient, that the existence of 
the eternal hereafter of the soul cannot be 
proved philosophically, and conclusively, 
and surely? By no means. It follows 
only that we cannot prove it mathematic- 
ally, geometrically, tangibly; and as here 
below we perceive adequately only what is 
proved to us in that way, it follows also, 
as says Emerson, that "we cannot write it 
down in propositions, " but our mind is 
satisfied, although not fully. 

It is the great error of the Positivists of 
the present day to confound the fields of 
thought, by mixing the spiritual and im- 
material with the corporeal and the mater- 
ial. They claim for a series of truths a 
standard of demonstration of which they 
are not capable, and the fault of this 
method renders all positivistic search 
fruitless. These philosophers cannot re- 
quire in the arguments which prove the 
immortality of the soul, however con- 
clusive these arguments may be, the full 
evidence and the absolute clearness of the 



INTRODUCTORY. 11 

axioms of mathematics, because the field 
of ideas is not the same — and this is so, 
because God wants from us the merit of 
faith. We are in the land of shadows, we 
are not in the land of vision. And as 
James Martineau says : < 'We do not believe 
in immortality because we have proved it, 
but we forever try to prove it because we 
believe it. 77 

J. M. Leleu. 

Troy, N. Y., May 3d, 1904. 



Chapter I. 
The Question. 

Its Importance. — An Appeal to Reason anil to 
Faith. 

"Of all the things of which you are 
ignorant, what do you desire to know 
before all others ?" — "Whether I am im- 
mortal or not." 

Thus speaks mankind through the lips 
of a genius. (St. Augustine. Soliloquia, 
II.) For untold ages humanity was dis- 
interested in the scientific questions upon 
which our century has thrown its light. 
But hardly is philosophical thought 
aroused, when mankind developes a pas- 
sionate craving for the mysteries of the 
hereafter. 

For man, indeed, there is not a problem 

more tragical than this: "to be or not to 

be," to return after an ephemeral existence 

to nothingness whence we sprang, or to 

(13) 



14 HEREAFTER. 

pass from death to immortality. This is 
why the present generation, fatigued by 
scepticism, looks anxiously towards the 
other side of life, and youth recovering 
its elasticity from the vanities which 
weakened it, gives serious study to the 
superterrestrial ideal. 

Some philosophers in the name of ex- 
perientialisni proclaim that there is nothing 
after death. "Science," says Littre, "has 
not been able to establish any proof of life 
after death." For them the soul and the 
future life are chimeras, heavy words and 
nothing else ; beyond the grave is the un- 
knowable, the unnamed, nothingness. 

Is this oracle of so-called experimental 
science infallible? Christian philosophy, 
in its turn, employing experience does not 
find it hard to demonstrate with the most 
simple facts and most positive data that, if 
experimentialism be impartially consulted, 
it testifies in favor of our immortality. 

According to Brunetiere, "reason can- 
not demonstrate the immortality of the 
soul or the existence of God." Guizot, 



THE QUESTION. 15 

too, with the whole school of traditionalists 
pretends that "to try to establish the 
existence of a future life is to weaken the 
case : the hereafter is not an affair of 
demonstration, it is a matter of feeling. 7 ' 

We do not deny that purity of heart 
gives more limpidity and clearness, and 
that annihilation has always been, as 
somebody has said, the horizon of evil 
consciences. We must go to the true, 
with all our soul and according to Bossuet, 
reasoning which has a counter-stroke on 
the conduct of life "must end in the soul 
by a right will." 

But neither science nor faith is a work of 
feeling or "religious poetry." As the 
basis of moral order there must be no blind 
belief but scientific evidence — the only 
kind capable of giving life and producing 
conviction. The writer hopes to prove 
that reason is not so weak but it can 
demonstrate the immortality of the soul, 
and he will offer proofs not in any party- 
spirit, or from any vain sophistry, but 
from the perennis philosophia of Leibnitz, 



16 HERE AFTER . 

from principles of a triumphant and eter- 
nal evidence, the negation of which would 
destroy human thought. 

If Berthelot is to be believed, "two 
sources of knowledge do not exist, one 
revealed arising from the abyss of the un- 
knowable, the other extracted from obser- 
vation and experimentation." 

In other words human thought has no 
other field than the senses. 

Happily the great chemist refutes him- 
self, for he immediately recognizes that he 
is obliged to admit some realities, heat for 
instance, although he is totally ignorant of 
its intimate nature. 

In spite of positivism it must, therefore, 
be acknowledged that beyond tangible facts 
there is a world of superior realities. Why 
then do you refuse the right to reason to 
put itself under the guidance of a safer 
leader whose titles it will examine in ad- 
vance according to the methods of science, 
unless you admit that human thought 
which is hardly able to encompass an 
atom, is the measure of truth in its plen- 
itude? 



THE QUESTION. 17 

Faith is not the enemy of reason ; it is 
its only authorized mistress and an auxili- 
ary always useful and sometimes indis- 
pensable. 

Philosophy lights usque ad evidentiam 
one side of the problem of human destiny; 
but its torch leaves the other side in the 
deepest darkness. We shall then call 
revelation to add its divine rays to the 
light of reason and to open to our eyes a 
larger horizon towards the side of the here- 
after. In this way we shall see**super- 
natural data admirably adjusting them- 
selves to the needs and tendencies of 
human nature and we shall recognize from 
the wonderful harmonies radiating, here 
as elsewhere, from faith and reason, that 
both are the daughters of the same God. 

Such is the aim of this little work: to 
throw upon the great question of the here- 
after the light which emanates from the 
threefold focus of experience, reason and 
revelation ; and if the conclusion does not 
impose itself with the inflexible rigor of 
mathematics, we hope it will give at least 



18 HEREAFTER. 

an evidence capable of taking away all 
doubt and of becoming a counterpoise to 
the swoons of the will. 

For if in the face of the proofs of our 
immortality the modern mind still retreats, 
it is not because it lacks the light, but 
because it fears the moral consequences 
whose truth menaces it. Now a man who 
thus avoids the truth, from fear of virtue, 
is amenable to the saying of Eousseau: 
"Put your soul in the state of always 
desiring a future life and you will never be 
in doubt about it." 



Chapter II. 
The Hereafter in History. 

Before Christ. — After Christ. — Critical Dis- 
cussion on the Testimony of Nations. 

" Everywhere there exists a belief in a 
world different from that in which we live, 
everywhere faith is expressed in a future 
existence which awaits a part of our being 
after the destruction of the body. ' ' 1 

So speaks the unquestioned scientist M. 
de Quatrefages, after having read the an- 
nals of the nations. 

The Egyptians taught that the soul is 
immortal : after separation from the body 
it appears before the supreme Judge, sur- 
rounded by forty-two assistants ; the good 
are received into the society of Osiris and 
the wicked, to expiate their crimes, become 
incarnated in the body of animals. 

The Phoenicians believed in justice 

1 Unite de Pe"sp£ce humaine, ch. I. 
(19) 



20 HEREAFTER. 

beyond the grave, to be executed by the 
gods upon the Alonims or select souls. 

The Magi who were among the Chalde- 
ans the depositaries of wisdom, taught 
metempsychosis: at every period in the 
life of the world the soul begins a new ex- 
istence freighted with the the responsibil- 
ities of its preceeding life. 

The doctrine of the Persians is contained 
in the Zeud-Avesta and in the Boundehesh 
which is the explanation of the former 
book: the just departing from this life, are 
welcomed by Ormuzd the good God, while 
the guilty rejoin Ahriman the evil genius. 
But the triumph of sin will be only transit- 
ory: Ahriman will be vanquished and 
destroyed, and the wicked, after a tem- 
porary punishment, will share the hap- 
piness of the just. 

The Bast-Indian Nirvana is well known : 
according to Brahmanism, the soul, after 
divers re-incarnations proportionate to the 
merit of the individual, plunges into ab- 
solute Being and loses its personality in an 
eternal sleep. 



THE HEREAFTER IN HISTORY. 21 

Such, too, is almost the doctrine of the 
King, the oldest books of Chinese liter- 
ature. 

Purer and higher was the belief of the 
Gauls and the primitive Saxons; the druids 
expressly taught the dogma of the future 
life and the principal condition of meriting 
happiness was to practise the virtue dear 
to their forefathers, fortitude. 

The Greeks and Eomans share the uni- 
versal faith. Plato in his Laivs and Phedo 
insists upon the doctrine of future regen- 
eration and admits the eternity of hell: 
"Those who die guilty of great crimes fall 
into Tartarus and never depart thence." * 
Unhappily the arguments he uses are 
defective and his doctrine is spoiled by 
errors such as the pre-existence of the 
soul. 

Aristotle is not clear on the subject. 
Still he considers the soul as a "divine and 
eternal principle" which comes not from 
matter but from something extraneous to 
itself. It is therefore spiritual. Aristotle 

1 Phedo, 113, 114. — Gorgias, 526—528. 



22 HEKEAFTEK. 

places the premises from which the exist- 
ence of a future life is inferred. 1 

According to some rationalists the 
Hebrews were the only people who dis- 
agreed with the universal belief in the 
future life: this idea at first alien to the 
Mosaic religion was later borrowed by the 
chosen people from the savants of Babylon 
and Alexandria. Quite recently Professor 
Friedrich Delitzsch of " Babel and Bible' f 
fame expressed this opinion before the 
Kaiser and his court. 

It is true that the doctrine of the future 
life is not formulated as clearly in the Old 
Testament as in the New. According to 
Bossuet the reason is to be found in the 
fact that popular worship of the dead 
would have given place to superstitious 
evocations of spirits and idolatry, when 
one of the important missions of the 
Hebrews was to keep intact the dogma of 
the unity of God, against the gross tenden- 
cies and the polytheism of the day. Besides 
the existence of a future life, of punish- 

1 The Soul — Metaph} T sics. 



THE HEREAFTER IN HISTORY. 23 

ment and rewards eternal is literally ex- 
pressed in many passages of the Old 
Testament, for instance in the Book of Job. 

Christian revelation put this dogma in 
its full light. The immortality of the soul, 
the final separation of the good and the 
bad, the brevity of the present life, the 
magnificence of heaven, the torments of 
hell : all these truths are recalled on every 
page of this divine book so fitly called the 
"Gospel of Immortality." 

Among the Fathers of the Church and 
Catholic writers of any renown Origen in 
his book of Principles is the only one who, 
while admitting the future life, argues 
against the eternity of punishment, but 
several Councils settled forever the form- 
ulary of the dogma, especially the second 
of Constantinople, the fourth of Lateran, 
the second of Lyons and the Council of 
Florence. 

So up to the eighteenth century the 
Catholic doctrine was generally taught in 
all its purity. This unanimity was scarce- 
ly broken in the ninth century by the 



I 



24 HEREAFTER. 

doctrine of metempsychosis held by John 
Scotus Erigena 1 or in the twelfth by the 
pantheism of Averroes, or in the sixteenth 
by the atheism produced by the Renais- 
sance. 

But reason separated from faith without 
being chained in its lawful ascent avoids 
dangers with difficulty and often goes from 
one excess to another, from the most de- 
grading sensualism to a proud pantheism. 

We know the leaders of the sensualistic 
school who according to the word of 
Aristotle make the body and the brute 
rule instead of man : once the spirituality 
of the soul is denied there can be no more 
question of immortality. To this group 
are connected the greatest number of 
modern materialists: so for Buehner the 
final destiny of man consists in preparing 
phosphates for nature and for the De Gon- 
court brothers, life according to Paul 
Bourget ' 'is nothing else than a series o* 
epileptic fits between a double nihility. " 

1 Born in Ireland, died about 875, condemned 
by Rome in 1059, author of Dialogus de divisione 
naturae. 



THE HEREAFTER IN HISTORY. 25 

The pantheistic school admits a certain 
immortality, but it is the immortality of 
the general reason and not of the individual 
soul. Kant is its precursor ; for him the 
soul is only the idea of unity of thought 
under the diversity of phenomena ; specul- 
ative reason therefore cannot demonstrate 
either the existence of the immortality of 
the soul called by him the noumenon ; still 
as this truth is necessary for the direction 
of life, it must be admitted in the name of 
practical reason. 

For Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, only 
one thing is immortal, namely, the idea 
and that, not in passing individuals, but in 
the species or ideal form which is common 
to and survives all. 

Eenan, Comte and Taine likewise con- 
ceive eternal life as an ideal life to which 
we rise with our thought and which will 
consist in the remembrance remaining in 
us after the disappearance of our person- 
ality. 

Let us still mention metempsychosis 
which deceived so many during the last 



26 HEKEAFTEK. 

century with its different epurations of 
souls in an immortality earthly according 
to some, sidereal according to others. 

A still further manifestation of the 
thought of mankind regarding its destiny 
is found in the worship of the dead and in 
the grand or humble monuments every- 
where and at all times erected in honor of 
the departed. Of course in customs as in 
doctrines there are absurdities and extrav- 
agances but there is also a foundation of 
truth which is everywhere found to be the 
same. Aside from some exceptions the 
peculiar secret of which lies in the pas- 
sions, humanity expects a life beyond the 
grave. 

Whence came the general belief ? Among 
men there is an infinite variety of charac- 
ters, aptitudes, customs and prejudices. 
How then explain this universal faith in 
the hereafter ? 

It is not a product of sensible experience, 
for every life seems to be destroyed in the 
terrible duel between life and death. 

It is not the result of science and study, 
for it precedes all philosophical reflexion. 



THE HEREAFTER IN HISTORY. 27 

It is not the work of a government or 
any temporal power, for those whom the 
ancients led to the punishment of a future 
life were kings like Sisiphe, Tantalus, 
Ixion. 

It is not an invention of this or that 
religious sect, for all religions are pen- 
etrated by the thought of a hereafter. 

It cannot be attributed to human pas- 
sions, since it is their torment, nor to 
ignorance, since it exists among the most 
civilized people. 

To this fact, therefore, there are only 
two causes. 

First it is certain that among all people 
religion gave birth to philosophy. Man 
was first a worshipper, then a philosopher, 
and the primary source of the beliefs he 
has professed was an initial revelation 
evidently infallible or God Himself. 

If we refuse to admit this fact, notwith- 
standing the testimony of history, we are 
obliged to see at least in this declaration o.f 
universal faith the spontaneous craving 
and irresistible instinct of human nature : 



28 HEREAFTER, 

"Omni in re, 7 ' says Cicero, "Consensio 
omnium gentium lex naturae putanda est." 
For, among so many distinct traits one 
thing is common to all men — their nature 
with the essential laws which direct them. 
Now none of these natural laws exists in 
vain ; all answer a need and are conformed 
to the reality: natura non mentitur. When, 
for instance, the instinct of birds leads 
them to remote climates or gives them a 
mysterious foresight into the morrow, there 
is reason for that instinct and it never 
deceives them. 

So it is with the laws which binds man- 
kind and forces it invincibly to hope for an 
immortal morrow after death. 

Since the human race attests this, there 
is a hereafter. 

At such and such an hour in its history 
mankind made the idea of the future life 
conform to its errors and passions, but at 
the bottom of the question affirmation is 
unanimous and constant ; from all the days 
of time and all the points of space there 
arises a profession of faith in immortality. 



Chapter III. 

Hereafter and the Human Soul. 

Simplicity of the Sonl. — Its Spirituality. — Its 
Immortality. — Activity of the Soul separ- 
ated from the Body. 

The positivism of to-day asserts that 
"man can know nothing of the nature of 
his soul." 

To demonstrate movement the old phil- 
osophers went walking ; let us try to pull 
aside the curtain which hides from our 
eyes the nature and destiny of our soul. 

I shall begin by saying that the human 
soul is not a body, nor is it divisible and 
composed like a body; it is simple and 
without parts and therefore absolutely 
distinct from matter. 

Two proofs among thousands establish 
the truth. Consciousness unmistakably 
affirms the identity of the cyw in the differ- 
ent periods of life. It is / who was young 
(29) 



30 HEREAFTER. 

and have become old, who long ago did 
acts, the responsibility of which I still 
carry. Bemembrance, the ordinary wit- 
ness of this identity, proclaims the un- 
alterable persistency of the deep and sub- 
stantial realty which says I at any time of 
my life. The body, moreover, is continu- 
ally renewed. It is not necessary to demon- 
strate here the famous experience of Flour- 
ens establishing that all parts of the body, 
even the bones, transform themselves per- 
petually. According to the materialist 
Moleschott, "only thirty days/' and not 
seven years as was commonly held, "are 
necessary to give the body a new com- 
position." 

The conclusion is evident, the eyw is un- 
changeable, while the body changes ; there 
is, therefore, in us a force distinct from 
matter "which lives in it and directs it," 
and which after having erected the majestic 
architecture of the body according to "the 
directive idea." constantly renews all cor- 
poral parts. 

Again, there is nothing common between 



HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 31 

the acts of the soul and the qualities of 
space. Can you measure a half of an emo- 
tion, a third of a thought, a fourth of an 
idea ? Materialists tell us that the thought 
is an agitation of molecules : but did you 
ever see rectilinear notions, circular senti- 
ments, round or square psychological 
phenomena ? 

No, the soul is not "the ensemble of the 
functions of the brain and the spinal mar- 
row.' 7 

The last word on this subject has been 
said by Gauthier: "that is a fossilized 
science which is bold enough to tell us that 
only matter exists and that only its laws 
govern the world. " x 

It follows from this that the soul, being 
indivisible, cannot perish by decomposi- 
tion: as it is without parts it cannot be 
broken or corrupted. This is the reason 
why St. Thomas concludes in his sober, 
energetic language: "The first and essen- 
tial property of the soul is to be, and this 
being can be lost only by the separation 

1 Revue ge*nerale des sciences; N. du 15 
Avril 1897. 



32 HEREAFTER. 

of the soul from itself — a thing that is 
impossible. " * 

But is this enough to assure us of the 
immortality of the soul ? No, the soul of 
animals is as simple as the human soul, 
and nobody dares seriously attribute to it 
a life beyond the body. 

In truth every principle of activity is 
simple and immaterial, yet we see all 
energy modifying itself and then disappear- 
ing. 

Here is where the Cartesian principles 
seem to us to be radically defective, and 
this weakness appears to be recognized by 
some of its exponents. One of them asked 
recently: "Is it true that death is only a 
dissolution of the parts ?" 

Descartes and many of his followers 
have confounded two things which are 
very distinct : simplicity and spirituality. 

Simplicity is only the negation of parts, 
it is indivision, indivisibility; spirituality 
is something higher. According to St. 
Thomas it is "the power to exist indepen- 
dently and even outside of matter. " 

1 Sutnma Theologica. I. p., q. a, 16. 



HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 33 

As long as you do not prove that the 
human soul rejoices in the possession of 
this second sublime property, you give 
only an initial and insufficient proof of its 
immortality. 

If, indeed, the soul cannot be destroyed 
by decomposition, is it not to be feared 
that it follows the fate of the body to which 
it is joined and that it disappears with it ? 

In our demonstration we shall follow the 
experimental method, taking for granted 
certain exact facts which cannot be denied. 
We do not see the soul in itself, but it 
betrays and reveals itself through its 
works. 

Now what is the most common subject of 
our thoughts and desires ? The true, the 
good, the beautiful, the just, the absolute, 
right, duty, law, virtue, ethics. Even in 
material things it is the universal, the ab- 
stract, the necessary that we perceive, for 
instance, the notions of being, end, sub- 
stance, causality, etc. 

Are these things of three dimensions'? 
Have they weight and volume, a half or 



34 HEREAFTER. 

third of which may be taken off ? What 
sense, sight or feeling apprehends this im- 
material world? Is it not evident that 
these noble realities, absolutely devoid of 
all sensible qualities, as sound and color, 
are entirely inaccessible to a corporal or- 
gan ? The act, therefore, by which we per- 
ceive and desire them is free of matter and 
goes beyond it: it is transcendental and 
spiritual. 

But the ancients used to say operari 
sequitur esse; the manner of acting is in 
keeping with the manner of being, the act 
is the faithful reflection of the principle 
from which it comes : this is an applica- 
tion of the principle of causality and 
materialists themselves do not deny it. 
"The positive theory,' 7 says Biichner, "is 
forced to acknowledge that the effect must 
correspond to the cause. " 1 

It results from this, then, that the human 
soul, passing beyond the sensible order, 
enjoys a peculiar life which it holds from 
its own nature. 

1 Kraft und Stoff, p. 218. 



HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 35 

The soul does not receive its life from 
matter, its being does not arise from its 
union with the body; why then should it 
perish with it? U A being/' says Fenelon, 
" which is not the cause of the existence of 
another, cannot be the cause of its an- 
nihilation." 2 

Thus there appears the difference between 
the soul of man and that of the animal: 
this acting through and with the senses 
only, does not survive the destruction of 
the body. a How," asked Aristotle, "could 
the power of walking exist without the 
legs?" 3 

The human soul, on the contrary, accord- 
ing to the grand image of Dante, is not 
drowned in matter; it emerges from its 
top, as the swimmer from the water. It 
becomes, writes St. Thomas, more capable 
of apprehending the highest truth as it 
becomes independent of corporeal things. 
Even in a state of union with the body, 

2 I^ettres sur la Metaphysique et la Religion, 
Lettre II, ch. 2. 

3 De Generatione, I,. II, ch. 3. 



36 HEREAFTER. 

the soul sometimes seems to retire into 
itself to enjoy truth in a better way. When 
the senses become dull or weak, the intel- 
lect of the scientist or the ascetic soars 
into ecstasies and great souls radiate extra- 
ordinary brilliancy through the ruins of the 
body. 

Beside nowadays the materialistic thesis 
is abandoned by the majority of physiolog- 
ists and physicians who formerly were its 
principal supporters. They have thor- 
oughly explored the surface of the brain 
and found only sensitive and motor cen- 
ters; there is no chamber there to locate 
the intellect. If, therefore, the soul can- 
not think without images, it is because the 
brain is the indispensable condition of 
thought: it is not the cause. 

What conclusion springs from these 
facts'? Either that observation and ex- 
perience are powerless and sterile, and 
then, what becomes of the pretentious 
positive and scientific method ? Or, they 
have the importance which is attributed to 
them, and then we must acknowledge in 



HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 37 

man a principle independent of matter, a 
transcendental and spiritual reality. 

When a naturalist has before him some 
organs of an animal or plant, by the process 
of deduction he arrives at a certain knowl- 
edge of its functions and life and constit- 
utes again the whole organism. 

Now look at the operations of the soul : 
they attest its simplicity and spirituality. 
But the nature of the soul betrays even its 
destiny. What the soul is shows us what 
it will be ; independent of the transforma- 
tions of matter, it holds its titles to immor- 
tality, engraved in its immutable and 
spiritual essence: its reason for being is 
not in its union with the body, though 
that union constitutes a natural entity: it 
is higher. 

The soul is immortal, not by favor or 
privilege, but because, as Bossuet says, it 
has in itself the principles of an unchange- 
able consistency. 

If, then, science with scales in hand 
proves the perpetuity of the smallest atom 
of matter, philosophy with the help of ex- 



38 HEKEAFTER. 

perience and reason, demonstrates the 
supremacy of the soul over matter and its 
future destiny. 

Is there need to add that the survival of 
the soul will in no way be akin to idleness 
or inertia ? 

To be, even in the lowest degree, is to 
act: every substance is endowed with 
activity in keeping with its condition : non 
est substantia otiosa. 

The interruption of the soul's life would 
be tantamount to its annihilation. The 
senses undoubtedly will be reduced to im- 
puissance: how indeed could the soul see 
without eyes ? But the intellectual facul- 
ties whose acts are thinking, willing, lov- 
ing, will freely exercise their activity, 
since they are spiritual ; the conditions of 
this activity will scarcely be modified from 
the outside. 

The higher realities, as the true, the 
beautiful, the good, which belong to the 
supersensible world, will always be within 
reach of the soul and will nourish and 
realize its aspirations. If it is removed 



HEREAFTER AND THE HUMAN SOUL. 39 

from the influences of the sensible world 
whence it borrowed its ideas, why should 
they not come to it by another way, for in- 
stance by the action of a superior, a divine 
light, as we shall later explain ? 

The soul will always be able to know 
itself, to possess its acquired ideas or to 
add to them, and even have intercourse 
with other spirits and especially with God. 
With Bossuet let us conclude: " After 
death the life of our reason is safe." 



Chapter IV. 
Hereafter and Justice. 

What is Justice ? -— Insufficient Sanctions. — 
Necessity of a Future Life. — The Neo- 
Stoicism of Eant. — False Conceptions of 
Justice. 

Justice is a universal and absolute prin- 
ciple : it is not subordinate either to cir- 
cumstances or to local or historical contin- 
gencies ; it is as unchangeable as a geomet- 
rical axiom. As it is true everywhere and 
always that a straight line is the shortest 
distance between two points, so is it true 
that good and evil are separate and distinct 
in all climates and at all times. 

Besides, if there exists a God personal, 
intelligent and free, justice, as all perfec- 
tions, is interwoven in His indefectible 
essence. He is, indeed, supremely in- 
dependent in Himself, but He must render 
to every man according to his works. 
Creator and Father of human beings en- 
(40) 



HEREAFTER AND TTJSTICE. 41 

dowed with liberty. He is the author of the 
laws which direct their conscience ; indis- 
pensable supporter of the moral order, He 
must insure to it a sanction capable of 
preventing and repressing human lapses. 
In short, He must be at the same time 
the eye which directs and the hand which 
strikes. 

Now, if justice is not an empty word, it 
must receive somewhere a plenary and in- 
fallible application. 

In this world justice is already exer- 
cised: legal chastisements, the natural 
consequences of virtue and vice, the testi- 
mony of men, the satisfaction of conscience 
are sanctions not without value. But are 
they sufficient ? No. 

In the first place human justice is a real 
image of God's justice, but one often dis- 
figured. 

Who does not know that justice in this 
life is often the application only of defec- 
tive laws shaped by human ignorance and 
perversity. 

Besides, it reaches only a very small part 



42 HEREAFTER. 

of our activity; our interior life wholly 
escapes it, and among exterior acts many 
do not fall under its regard or power. It 
is, moreover, as an old writer says, only a 
"one-handed justice ;" it simply punishes, 
while its rewards of virtue are as rare as 
they are delusive. 

And what shall we say if the sword of 
justice comes into weak, corrupt hands, 
and if it spares great criminals and strikes 
the innocent ! 

But, perhaps, exterior sanctions such as 
wealth, honor, fame offer a surer homage 
to virtue. This is not so: for if public 
esteem generally favors a man of con- 
science, material prosperity is very often 
the salary of vice triumphant. 

The judgments of the vox populi are 
usually blind, passionate, capricious, while 
its leaders are flatterers employing only 
" words, words, words. " 

As to glory, it may seduce some idols of 
popular election, but for the multitude it is 
a word absolutely empty, and if you make 
glory consist in a posthumous noise which 



HEREAFTER AND JUSTICE. 43 

does not reach those whom it would exalt, 
then we must confess that it is a very 
aleatory counterpoise to the hard sacrifices 
imposed by virtue. 

When, then, Eenan proposes as a reward 
for virtue l 'the living in a collective thought 
of mankind and in the general result of the 
working-up of the species; when Littre 
asserts that "the contemplation of the eter- 
nal laws of the world" makes life worth 
the living, they speak less as moralists 
than as the virtuosos of dilettantism. 

Others may say: "It is true that man- 
kind does not receive any reward for 
virtue, but cui bono? Eight-living carries 
its own reward : virtue and happiness can 
be put in equation since they are one and 
the same thing." 

Nonsense! AVhat is this interior peace 
of conscience, this happiness resulting 
from virtue ? It is less a reward than the 
impartial voice of a witness and judge ; at 
most, it is an anticipatory consolation 
which helps us wait the hour of justice, 
but it becomes a fallacy and lie, if that 
hour never strikes. 



44 HEREAFTER. 

Besides, how many pure and delicate 
souls see that precious peace disappear 
little by little in proportion to the growth 
of the ideal with which they are smitten, 
and to the realization of the inevitable im- 
perfections which separate them from it ! 

And is remorse the infallible punish- 
ment of vice? Does it bear a true propor- 
tion to the sacred exigencies of justice ? It, 
indeed, punishes light crimes and the 
guilty who are not yet familiarized with 
evil, but its spur becomes blunt by the 
habit of sin and ere long the i 'interior tor- 
mentor" lulls the insensible and atrophied 
conscience into a fatal yet real peace. 

Is it necessary to give here any serious 
consideration to the evolutionary morality 
advocated by Huxley and Spencer which 
seeks to popularize virtue by basing it on 
the complete perfectibility of human per- 
sonality? It is to be feared that this 
result, excellent in itself, will seem to the 
majority of men to be incommensurable 
with the efforts that it supposes. Such an 
ascent of the soul presumes an orientation, 



HEREAFTER AND JUSTICE. 45 

an aim, a terminus. Towards what un- 
known thing will this orientation occur if 
only nothingness awaits us the last even- 
ing of life ? And in the supposition that 
one or the other of these sanctions or the 
aggregate possesses the value which is 
attributed to them, is not supreme injustice 
still to be repaired ? 

Is it not, indeed, the heroism of great- 
ness and the glorious summit pf virtue to 
give one's live for a great cause, for one's 
country or faith ? On the other hand, is it 
not the most abominable crime to with- 
draw stoically from life by suicide and thus 
betray the most essential duties towards 
God, society and one's self? 

But what is there among the sanctions 
so far considered that can efficaciously in- 
spire the martyr and successfully restrain 
the apostate of duties ? 

There is nothing. Another justice must 
then exist, or justice is but an empty word 
and a snare. 

Ah! I understand the sorrowful appeal, 
not to impassible nature but to divine 



46 HEREAFTER. 

justice, which everywhere is made, by bar- 
barous tribes as well as by civilized 
nations, by the lips of Plato and Seneca, 
as well as by the voice of St. Paul, and 
which constitutes the most popular demon- 
stration of the immortality of the soul. 

"To merit,' 7 wrote Seneca, "is to wait." 
"Merit and suffering, " saysCaro, "are the 
things which make us immortal; that is 
the eternal, indestructable argument of the 
future life." Struck by this fact Fenelon 
asserted that even if the soul were mater- 
ial, it would be necessary to bestow im- 
mortality upon it, in order to render to 
every man according to his works. 

The existence of this supreme sanction 
has often been called into question, despite 
its evident necessity. A member of the 
school of ethical culture lately declared 
that "the fear of punishment and the hope 
of a reward are motives which alter the 
morality of an act." 

Let us admit it: to believe that the 
human heart is solely accessible to motives 
of interest is evident calumny, but to deny 



HEREAFTER AND JUSTICE 47 

the influence of fear and hope, would also 
be to oppose the reality of facts. 

To demand this pretended disinterested- 
ness would be to exact a task against 
nature. 

This theory moreover supposes that man 
is absolutely autonomous , that he is in 
himself the reason of being, his center, his 
god. This is the autolatry conceived by 
those writers who imagined "the religion 
of the soul" — of a soul whose immortality 
they call in question. 

Is it not evident that man like other 
beings, is subject to superior laws % He is 
free but not absolutely independent. His 
first duty toward the supreme Legislator is 
to respect His laws, especially that one 
which by an irresistible movement brings 
the subject to happiness. And if this 
primal duty identifies itself in man with 
interest, it is because the same God is at 
the same time the supreme arbiter of our 
destiny and the sovereign good which will 
be its crown. 

To despise these rewards and pains is to 



y 48 HEREAFTER. 

deny with surprising pride that essential 
prerogative of the absolute Being by which 
He is the principle and the end of every- 
thing; the guardian of moral order, the 
avenger of crime and the rewarder of 
virtue. 

False and boastful theory, indeed, which 
has not even the merit of originality ! For 
it is stoicism again revived and the visible 
disguise of an error famous two centuries 
ago, quietism. 

If justice which rewards, shocks the dis- 
interestedness of some free-thinkers, or so- 
called seekers of truth, justice which pun- 
ishes, alarms their conscience and disturbs 
their soul with scruples. 

" Vengeance," they say, "does not cure 
evil : it multiplies it." This is true regard- 
ing private vengeance; arbitrary, capricious 
and passionate "it multiplies evil" and 
becomes the source of deplorable excess. 
God, therefore, forbids it and reserves 
the exercise of it to Himself, either through 
the agency of human justice or through 
direct and personal intervention: ''Mihi 



HEREAFTER AND JUSTICE. 49 

vindicta, revenge is mine: I will repay, 
saith the Lord" (Bom. XII, 19). 

It does not follow that God can be com- 
pared to a fierce, vindictive tyrant gloat- 
ing with gross satisfaction over the sight 
of the sufferings of the guilty who fall into 
His hands. 

He is the supreme and incorruptible 
Judge who executes the eternal laws of 
justice; these laws require the re-establish- 
ment of the general equilibrium disturbed 
by sin. This re-establishment of the moral 
order is accomplished by the pains which 
are as a benevolent reaction against evil. 

From this clear and simple conception 
of justice one sees how false and danger- 
ous is the pseudo -humanitarian theory, 
according to which, justice ought to limit 
itself to the right of correction only. 

By this rule the most inveterate crim- 
inals escape the arm of justice and the 
more incorrigible they are, the more power- 
less and disarmed society becomes; if 
these diseased member of the social body 
reject its offices, justice has only to depart, 
as a physician politely discharged. 



50 HEREAFTER. 

Tso, the amelioration of the guilty is not 
the principal end of justice; that end is 
the final triumph of good over evil : insuf- 
ficiently assured in this life, it will be 
evident to everyone in the next life. And 
so, beyond the obscure and narrow horizon 
of the imperfect justice of this world, both 
reason and faith see the dawn of a lumin- 
ous, open future where everything dis- 
cordant here below will mingle in the final 
harmony of the whole of creation. 

The world where we live is only a 
prelude and beginning : it is elsewhere that 
we shall attain our end. As Eousseau says: 
"All things do not terminate with life, —*» 
they are regulated after death." 



Chapter V. 
Hereafter and the Divine Plan. 

General View. — Law of Providence. — Aspira- 
tions of the Soul. — Metempsychosis. — Pan- 
theism and Immortality. 

All philosophy is ruled by the 
idea of end. Finality is the dominant 
law of the world; for according to the 
profound remark of Aristotle nothing is 
made in vain, and a thing without an end 
is impossible, for it would be without 
reason. Bossuet writes: "The relation 
between order and reason is extreme. ?? 
God the sovereign and perfect reason, 
rules the world with an impeccable wis- 
dom. As a clever artist, He adapts the 
means to the end and organizes every 
being in view of its determination. There 
is a perfect proportion, I was going to say, 
a perfect equation, between actions and 
their principle, between functions and their 
end, between the nature and destiny of all 
(51) 



52 HEREAFTER. 

beings. So true is this that if one term is 
known, reason can with assurance discover 
the other. Such is the order of the koct/xos, 
the vague harmony of which Pythagoras 
admired and which St. Thomas Aquinas 
put in such bold relief. 

In fact, just as the knowledge of the 
properties of bodies discloses to the scien- 
tist their nature and destiny, so the study 
of the faculties and aspirations of man 
must inform us of his future. Is it pos 
sible that God has formed from the same 
mould a being called to immortality and 
another condemned to spend an ephemeral 
existence without hope of survival in the 
future ? 

* * 

By a privilege of its nature the soul sur- 
vives the body. These are two substances 
so unlike, that we ought to be more sur- 
prised at their union than about their dif- 
ferent destinies. 

God, says St. Thomas, respects the 
natural condition of every being. If man 
is noble when he takes this oath : ' 'What 



HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 53 

is said, is said, what is written, is writ- 
ten," how can we understand that God 
tells a lie and treacherously breaks the 
word He gives? 

But what are created beings and especi 
ally the human soul! They are divine 
ideas externalized, they are imperfect but 
real expressions of the Word of God, or, 
as Bacon says, vox Dei in rebus revelata. 

If God, therefore, has given to the soul 
a spiritual nature and an immortal consti- 
tution, He will not abrogate this providen- 
tial disposition. He is obliged not to 
contradict Himself and the soul will sub- 
sist, as St. Thomas says, "by the im- 
mutability of the divine will." 

And even if the soul by nature were not 
immortal, one could not conclude that it 
ought some day to terminate its existence. 
For God created things to be, ut sint; God, 
the Being by excellence and the principle 
of all things, does not destroy anything 
that He has made. His gifts, says Holy 
Writ, are without repentance and He is not 
the God of the dead but of the living. 



54 HEREAFTER. 

This prolific and luminous principle of 
St. Thomas is an intimation of genius; 
Lavoisier demonstrated it experimentally 
and formulated it thus : in the domain of 
nature "nothing creates itself , nothing is 
lost, everything becomes transformed. " * 

Every part of nature undergoes an indef- 
inite metamorphosis, nothing disappears. 
When the human body, for instance, ceases 

1 This principle of Lavoisier is just now re- 
ceiving a new proof from the revelations of the 
metal, radium ; and the atomic theory and prin- 
ciple of the conservation of energy can now be 
looked upon as certain. Sir William Ramsay, 
professor of chemistry at University College, 
Ivondon, has made the discovery that this mys- 
terious element, radium, has the power of chang- 
ing into another element, helium. He found that 
besides its other manifestations, radium con- 
stantly gives off an emanation which seems to 
behave in all respects like a heavy gas. It can 
be collected in flasks, measured, weighed, but in 
about a month it entirely disappears. What 
becomes of it ? By the aid of the spectroscope 
Ramsay found that it changes into helium. Thus 
it can be claimed one element has been detected 
in the very process of transformation into an- 
other. 



HEREAFTEK AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 55 

to live, it does not become annihilated, as 
is commonly believed ; under the action of 
chemical forces, it undergoes the law of ex- 
change : but not one atom is lost. 1 

Thus does God, the author of this law of 
the physical world, respect beings infinitely 
small, and thus does He preserve their ex- 
istence. They have, however, no end 
proper to themselves and they exist only 
for the whole, of which they are a part. 
Will God then plunge into nothingness the 
human soul which Kant calls "an end in 
itself, 77 and which possesses more reality 
than all the material world? Without 
doubt the soul does not necessarily exist ; 
God freely created it and He can freely 
destroy it ; as it has not in itself the reason 
of being, God would have only to suspend 
His conservative action which is a pro- 
longed creation, that it may cease to be. 
Such annihilation, however, would require 
nothing but an intervention of His almighty 
power : to annihilate and to create, to make 
from nothing and to reduce to nothing are 

1 Cremation does uot militate against this 
theory: the process, though quicker, is the same. 



56 HEREAFTER. 

two equivalent acts pertaining to the only 
power capable of passing over the immeas- 
urable distance which separates being from 
non- being. 

And nothing in fact, says science, is 
annihilated in nature : all its elements per- 
sist and transform themselves; all the 
cosmic forces pulverize matter without 
destroying it: how, then, can they an- 
nihilate the soul ? 

Can I do that myself '? No, indeed ; I have 
not given being to the soul and I cannot 
take it away. Only God preserves it and 
He alone can annihilate it. As, then, a 
number must be odd or even, so, the 
angelic doctor concludes, it is becoming 
that the soul is immortal. 

Let us now in the light of divine wisdom 
examine no longer the immaterial essence 
of the soul, but its moral nature and in- 
timate aspirations. 

Every created life, not having in itself the 
source of its being, has need of being sup- 
ported by the absorption of an extraneous 
element. But the law of assimilation which 



HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 57 

presides over nutrition, evidently demands 
that the food be in keeping with the needs of 
and accommodate itself to the nature of the 
life it must renew. There must be and 
there is, it is easy to see, a kind of homo- 
geneousness between the living substance 
and the nutritious principle which nour- 
ishes it. 

Now truth is the food of the soul, the 
life of the intellect. It is the pabulum not 
only of the science of the physical world 
and material things, but also of principles 
necessary, unchangeable and eternal, And, 
although our mind is most limited, nothing, 
strange to say, can appease its need of 
knowing ; it is thirsty for absolute truth. 
It travels through the kingdom of created 
things without obtaining the satisfaction of 
its natural craving ; even after having ex- 
plored the immense ocean of truth which 
the dying Newton contemplated, its curi- 
osity does not yet attain a sufficiency, 
because it carries with it an ideal whose 
term reaches the infinite. 

Desire is proportionate to knowledge 



58 HEREAFTER. 

and goes the same way. Let us listen 
within : our heart tries everything in vain 
and its most imperious desires are unsatis- 
fied. After our thought has made a grand 
tour through finite things, our heart feels a 
sensation of emptiness which nothing here 
can fill: science, wealth, honors, beauty, 
satisfactions of every kind fall into it as 
into a bottomless abyss which grows 
deeper and deeper. But there is something 
more: an animal confined in the narrow 
sphere of sensation has no desire which 
passes the corner of the space it occupies, 
and the moment of duration which measures 
its life. Man, on the contrary, leaps over 
time and space by thought, and naturally 
desires to be always. There is in us an 
irresistible aspiration after immortality, a 
passionate instinct of survival, an illimit- 
able ambition to live forever. 

So, all our aspirations mount toward the 
infinite. As bodies tend toward the center 
of the earth, the soul gravitates toward the 
absolute and therein searches the place of 
its eternal rest. Thence it came and there 



HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 59 

it will return. For the perfection of all 
things, says St. Thomas, is to go back to 
their principle : it is the flux and reflux of 
creation. 

A strange reason some, perhaps, will 
say; you believe in a future life solely 
because you desire it. — Yes, but there is 
a great difference between an individual 
and private desire, and a natural and spon- 
taneous inclination of the human heart. 
This desire is not our own work, nor is it 
the fictitious product of our imagination ; 
we did not give it to ourselves and it is not 
in our power to remove it from us; it 
springs from the very bottom of our being 
and is identified with it. 

Nor is this desire a personal fact result- 
ing from fortuitous circumstances, but a 
primitive, human, universal fact which 
can be explained only by a general law of 
nature. And this law, having God as its 
author, cannot lead us into error. 

What ! God does not deceive the instinct 
of an insect, and would He make that in- 
stinct lie which He has engraved on our 



60 HEKE AFTER. 

soul with His own Hand! He has not 
established any of the laws of nature in 
vain, and would He violate the law which 
He has placed on man as on His master- 
piece! He makes everything "with num- 
ber, weight and measure;" with infallible 
wisdom He leads beings to their end ; to- 
day He impells us by an irresistible move- 
ment towards happiness, truth, life, the 
ideal, and would He wait for us on the 
morrow to plunge us into nothingness, 
after having given to us a foretaste of those 
things which escape us ! No, no, it is not 
true unless we admit with Hegel that con- 
tradiction is the law of being as well as of 
thought. But "that which is capable of 
God," says Bossuet, "must be immortal 

with Him." 

# * 

After the materialism of the eighteenth 
century, some thinkers, fatigued by doubt 
and denial, sought peace and strength in a 
vague and ambiguous spiritualism. They 
allowed themselves to be seduced by an old 
error which had originated in Egypt and 



HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 61 

Chaldea and which Pythagoras and Origen 
in their time made notorious. I refer to 
metempsychosis whose adepts during the 
last century include Fourier, the founder 
of the phalansterian school, Jean Eeynaud, 
the author of "Heaven and Earth/ 7 Pez- 
zani, the author of "The Plurality of the 
Existences of the Soul, 7t and, some have 
recently added, the dreamers of spiritism- 
According to them, when life reaches its 
end and the organs are exhausted, the soul 
goes into another body and begins a new 
existence. If the soul were good during 
the first trial it will be united to a more 
perfect body and it will spend eternity in 
an indefinite series of such trials. 

The only noteworthy difference between 
metempsychosis of ancient and modern 
times is the rejection of the old hypothesis 
that human souls enter the bodies of 
animals. 

This theory, its exponents assert, solves 
most satisfactorily two very complex prob- 
lems : the physical and moral inequalities 
which we verify in this world, and the 



62 HEREAFTER. 

punishment and reward of the next life. 
Notwithstanding the serious pretense 
and the fantastic out-look of this tour of 
soul from star to star, metempsychosis is 
an hypothesis without any solid founda- 
tion. These successive re-incarnations are 
in direct opposition to reason ; for, proba- 
tion in its elementary and philosophical 
meaning, is a preparation for a permanent 
and unchangeable state ; how can you seri- 
ously conceive a probation which has 
neither conclusion nor end and a chimer- 
ical journey towards a goal which does not 
exist*? And, then, is it true or possible 
that all unfortunate human beings are 
guilty ? By no means, for they are not 
conscious of crime committed in the pre- 
ceeding life. Now a punishment which is 
not connected with the remembrance of 
deviation from rectitude, is cruelty and 
nonsense; only the guilty must be pun- 
ished, but they must perceive and feel their 
guilt. Life for the unfortunate as for 
others is not a chastisement, but a trial, a 
little hard, perhaps, but one which will 
receive its reward during eternity. 



HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 63 

Is there need to show how dangerous 
and immoral this theory is ? If the trials 
which menace us, are not to have an end 
every sanction is gone ; the creature is the 
absolute master of its fate ; for it may in- 
definitely postpone its repentance in such 
a way that man is hopelessly delivered to 
corruption, and the justice of God eternally 
challenged and checked by the bold revolt 
of the impenitent sinner ! 

Biichner made this severe stricture on 
the immature science of to-day: "Our 
modern philosophers delight to heat over 
old vegetables and call them by new names, 
in order to serve them as the latest inven- 
tions of the philosophical kitchen J' (Kraft 
und Stoff, p. 41). Nothing is more just; 
hence the revival of the old theory of the 
Hindoo nirvana by the modern pantheistic 
school. It proclaims the extinction of per- 
sonality and its absorption into the uni- 
versal soul which it calls God. Hegel and 
Taine, Comte and Eenan agree in denying 
the immortality of every human soul, in 



"64 HEREAFTER. 

order to admit an eternal existence under 
the title of a pure idea. What is immortal 
for them is the idea of the dead individual 
subsisting and surviving in mankind. In 
a word it is the Hindoo nirvana, the repose 
of final annihilation. A pleasant idea, for- 
sooth, to suggest to us this deep, endless 
sleep as a new life, this annihilation of the 
heart and thought as a beatitude, and the 
end of individuality as the immortality to 
which we aspire. 

Even if this identity of an inert and life- 
less substance were safeguarded, of what 
use would it be ? To take away from the 
soul the consciousness of this identity is 
to ruin entirely its activity: is not the 
acknowledgement of this identity the first 
degree of knowledge % 

Justice demands and reason proclaims 
the immortal personality of the soul, the 
survival of the ego and individual consci- 
ousness in reward or punishment. Man 
must find himself the same beyond the 
grave, without having the chain of his 
identity broken by the exstinction of con- 



HEREAFTER AND THE DIVINE PLAN. 65 

sciousness and the silence of memory. The 
harmony of the divine plan requires it ; an 
immortal hereafter is necessary to our 
soul. 



Chapter VI. 
Hereafter and Punishment. 

Necessary Conclusion of the Moral Order. — 
Sanction ot the Law. — Hell and the Good- 
ness of God. — Conditional Immortality. — 
The Reason of Hell. 

1 'They that have done good shall go into 
life everlasting and they that have done 
evil, into everlasting fire. "This is the Cath- 
olic faith as expressed in the Creed of St. 
Athanasius. 

The dogma of eternal punishment, how- 
ever, is not the exclusive property of the 
Church ; it is at the bottom of every reli- 
gion and it has been and is believed by the 
whole world. Plato and Virgil, Voltaire 
and Bousseau, as the Gospel itself, treat 
this subject. 

If this dogma were as absurd, as our 
modern rationalists contend it is, how 
could it have so easily obtained such uni- 
versal credence? Have we not here an 
(66) 



HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 67 

evident proof of its perfect conformity with 
the noblest instincts of human nature and 
the exigencies of reason? When, therefore, 
Jules Simon writes that < 'no principle of 
reason leads to eternity of punishment or 
allows us to admit such a doctrine"; when 
Figuier boldly asserts that "hell is a 
dogma which has had its day and is no 
longer worthy of refutation," we suspect 
that they gave very superficial study to the 
question. 

In the eyes of right reason, hell is not 
an absurdity; nor is it an unintelligible 
problem or an accessory and isolated truth. 
It is substantially connected with Catholic 
dogma and is the terrible and inevitable 
consequence of the most elementary and 
certain principles. 

Can any sane mind doubt, for instance, 
that being and non-being, good and bad, 
true and false are things essentially distinct 
and contradictory'? The one asserts what 
the other denies; their opposition, con- 
sequently, is absolute and radical, and it 
is impossible that they should have the 
same conclusion and bear the same fruit. 



68 HEREAFTER. 

At any period of time, remote as the 
mind can make it, the true cannot become 
false, nor can the good become bad. Of 
course if they were ever to meet or com- 
mingle there would no longer be an ir- 
reducible opposition between them, but 
only a difference of tint. 

Eternal hell is precisely the necessary 
corollary and the final term of this distinc- 
tion between good and evil, which prolongs 
itself indefinitely. This principle which is 
the key- stone of the moral order, appears 
in striking evidence and unbending vigor 
only when we approach it in connection 
with the stupendous dogma of punishment. 

Far from being "a crime, ?? or a "horrible 
fable' ' hell, indeed, is the necessary con- 
clusion of the moral order, and anyone 
who wishes to analyze thoroughly the con- 
tents of the first principles of thought will 
perceive that it is the last word of reason 
speaking of God and man and the relation 
existing between them. 

Let us listen to St. Thomas Aquinas on 
this subject: "It is a principle commonly 



HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 69 

admitted that the grievousness of wrong- 
doing is estimated according to the dignity 
of the person offended and the condition of 
the offender. Sin, consequently, acquires 
immeasurable grievousness from the in- 
finite perfection which it insults, although 
it comes from a being limited in its nature 
and faculties. 

By giving his heart to a perishable thing, 
man takes away from God His essential 
prerogative of being the Sovereign Lord, 
the last end and supreme beatitude of 
every human being. He changes his true 
destiny and commits a crime of treason 
against his Maker, which in strict justice 
calls for infinite punishment. As a matter 
of fact, sin, according to Catholic teaching, 
has been and could be expiated only by the 
infinite satisfaction of the God-Man. But 
the sinner who persists in final impenitence 
cuts himself off from this source of pardon. 
He himself, therefore, must suffer the pen- 
alty. But as he is a creature, he is unable 
to endure punishment infinite in intensity, 
so he must endure it infinite at least in 
duration. 



70 HEEE AFTER. 

There is another side to this philosophy 
of eternal guilt : the violation of the moral 
order, which religion calls sin, is not only 
infinite in malice, it is also, at least vir- 
tually, infinite in duration. When, in- 
deed, man demands from a finite being a 
fictitious happiness, he violently separates 
himself from the Supreme Good. If God 
does not grant him a delay, (and under 
what title is He so obliged?) this state 
of divorce is prolonged in the sinner and 
must have the same duration as the soul 
has, that is to say, an eternal duration. 
For if death strikes him in guilt, it takes 
him as he is and leaves him unchanged : 
eternity which he reaches, is not a second 
trial, but a state which remains immutable 
and ever the same." (Contra Gentes, 1, 
IV, c. 95.) 

Again, is it not the intimate desire of 
the sinner who abandons himself to pas- 
sion, to cling to it now and always f To 
his idol he vows an eternal worship, asks 
of it his felicity forever and thus gives to 
his choice an unlimited and endless com- 



HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 71 

pass. "The impenitent sinner/' says 
Bossuet, "is not simply in the act or habit 
of sin ; he is in the state of sin which has 
become humanized in him. He is man 
made sin." 

Undoubtedly shadows still remain about 
this truth, but shadows are not contradic- 
tions. What is there astonishing in this, 
since the Infinite is the basis of all Chris- 
tian dogmas ? "What we know of the acts 
of God," says Leibnitz, "is almost nothing 
and yet we wish to measure His wisdom 
and goodness by our little knowledge. 
What rashness! To say with St. Paul: 
c altitudo sapientiael'is not to renounce 
our reason." 

We are asked how a momentary weak- 
ness can deserve infinite punishment, and 
it is asserted that the dogma of Hell, if it 
is not a flagrant violation of divine justice, 
manifests at least a cruelty that cannot be 
reconciled with the goodness of God. 

We have already said that if the punish- 
ment is rigorously infinite, it is, neverthe- 
less, just, since there is an exact propor- 



72 HEREAFTER. 

tion between the sin and its punishment. 
But properly speaking, the punishment is 
not infinite even in duration, since it has 
had a beginning and each day it stretches 
further on. Hence the victims of Hell will 
never spend infinite time in their prison of 
fire, though the duration of their punish- 
ment exceed all human calculation. The 
infinite, moreover, transcends all measure 
and admits no degree, while the pains of 
Hell are as diverse as the sins of which 
they are the chastisement. The Council of 
Florence decreed: "Poenis tamen disparibus 
puniendos." l 

But why place in opposition the duration 
of a sin and that of the chastisement and 
say that * 'there is no temporal fault which 
deserves eternal punishment." Must the 
rigor of the penalty be measured, not ac- 
cording to the enormity of the crime, but 
according to its duration % If that were 
so, a crime of a moment, like the firing of 
a revolver, would deserve instantaneous 
punishment. And yet when a man makes 

1 In decreto Uuionis. 



HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 73 

himself unworthy of pardon by the com- 
mission of a serious crime, he is sentenced 
to death, or to life-imprisonment, which 
means, as far as this world is concerned, 
perpetual punishment. 1 Are not the effects 
of this chastisement irrevocable in such a 
way that they would always continue, if 
the guilty person were always to live? 
Why, then, refuse to divine justice a right 
which we allow to human justice? (St. 
Thomas contra Gentes. Ill, 144. 

1 If this (moral) code meets with the public 
approval as a vindication of social order, how 
shall we declare it unjust in the Supreme Judge 
to cast out once for all, from the City of God and 
the society of the Saints impious men who have 
sinned against the majesty of the divine law? 
It is usually malefactors that have defied the law 
and that are punished for its violation, who con- 
demn our criminal code as too severe ; and it is 
only such as choose to be rebels against God that 
insist upon calling Him a tyrant. Mathematical 
truths are never controverted, because they do 
not oppose our passions ; but moral and religious 
truths are denied, because they often conflict 
with our natural inclinations." 

(Cardinal Gibbons.) 



74 HEEEAFTEE. 

But the opponents of eternal punishment 
make the most desperate appeals to divine 
mercy. Vain endeavors! As if the good- 
ness of God were the adversary of divine 
justice! As Cardinal Gibbons says: "God 
is, indeed, infinitely merciful, but His 
mercy cannot absorb His other attributes; 
it cannot run counter to His justice, His 
sanctity and that moral order He has 
established in the world. The higher 
appreciation one has for benevolence, 
truth, chastity and moral rectitude, the 
greater is his antipathy to the opposite 
vices. Now God whose love for virtue 
knows no bounds, must by the very nature 
of His Being, have an immeasurable aver- 
sion for all iniquity and, therefore, He can 
never be reconciled to the sinner, as long 
as he voluntarily clings to his sin. God 
exults not in the sufferings of His creatures, 
but in the manifestation of His eternal 
attributes." 

To desire in God greater mercy than 
justice would be to wish to deteriorate His 
clemency in weakness and to break the 



HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 75 

unity of the divine attributes which is 
reflected in all His works. The Bedemp- 
tion itself, as we know, is not only the 
most striking manifestation 1 of divine 
mercy, it is also synchronously an act of 
supreme justice. 

The goodness of God is essentially the 
friend of good order; far from hindering 
the action of justice, it supposes it in order 
to oblige every creature, says St. Thomas, 
to respect good order which is the good of 
the universe. 

Besides what reproach can we bring 
against divine mercy 1 2 God does not 

1 "He hath appeared for the destruction of 
sin, by the sacrifice of Himself ' Heb. IX, 26; 
"He gave himself for vis that he might redeem us 
from all iniquity and might cleanse to himself a 
people acceptable' ' Tit. II, 14. 

2 Hear Holy Writ: "Say not: The mercy of 
the Lord is great, he will have mercy on the 
multitude of my sins. For mercy and wrath 
quickly come from him and his wrath looketh 
upon sinners." PJccl, V, 6. 7. "Mercy and wrath 
are with him. He is mighty to forgive and to 
pour out indignation : according to his mercy is, 
so his correction judgeth a man according to his 
works.' ' Eccli. XVI, 13. 



76 HEREAFTER. 

neglect any means to lead man to his end, 
and to each and everyone He can say in 
the words of Holy Scripture: "What more 
should I have done to thee, and have not 
done?" 

At this reproach do we not hear the 
"anger of love rumblimg," as Joseph de 
Maistre observes? Despised by impenitent 
man, God withdraws, says Lacordaire, for, 
"love repulsed no longer i)ardons: hell is 
the realization of the law of love." x 

The philosophical systems which reject 
the eternity of punishment may be reduced 
to two, 2 one of which professes optional 

1 We may say that it is because God is infinit- 
ely good, wise and just that He has allowed the 
pit of hell to be dug in order thereby to excite 
men to good and to bury therein such as up to 
the very last hour of live have despised His love: 
"Eternal justice and primal love made me," says 
Dante speaking in the name of hell. 

2 I mention as a memorandum only, the system 
of Lucretius (De Natura rerum, III, 976) where 
the poet, to do away with the fear of Hell, gives 
a symbolical meaning to its torments. According 



HERE AFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 77 

or conditional immortality, the other fut- 
ure reconciliation of the wicked with God. 
The former system is very old: Cicero 
adopted it, some Christian writers, like 
Arnobius, accepted it and it is now, as the 
Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Eeligious 
Knowledge (N. Y. 1891, p. 1972) says, 
meeting great favor within the orthodox 
communions of Protestantism. Richard 
Whately, Locke, Hudson, Watts and 
Isaac Taylor are its best-known English 
defenders. 

This system declares that the good will 
live eternally and enjoy heaven as a 
reward for their virtues : but the wicked 
will be annihilated in punishment of their 
sin ; thus immortality is for every human 
being optional or conditional. St. Thomas 
with his deep acumen has refuted this 
doctrine. God, he says, could assuredly 
annihilate the guilty, but it is more just 
that He preserve and punish them. First, 

to him those torments are only the allegory 
which find punishment within themselves. Hinc 
Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita. 



78 HEREAFTER. 

because it is the will of man which revolts 
against God, while his nature remains in 
the order which is divinely secured. Pun- 
ishment, therefore, ought to strike the 
will. Now, if the guilty were annihilated, 
punishment would fall on nature only and 
the will would go free. There are, besides, 
two elements in sin: the guilty repel the 
Absolute Good and embrace what is perish- 
able, and these two elements must be found 
in the retribution. Now annihilation would 
deprive the sinner of the Absolute Good 
and would not punish the abuse he has 
made of creatures: a fact that would be 
contrary to justice. Then again the pains 
must be diverse and proportionate to the 
sins, if strict justice is to be realized; but 
there would be no degrees in annihilation ; 
such a penalty, therefore would be a viola- 
tion of justice! And what would become 
of the moral order if annihilation were its 
only sanction ? When the fear of eternal 
punishment is hardly strong enough to 
restrain the impetuosity of human pas- 
sions, of what value would the vague pro- 
spect of annihilation be f 



HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 79 

The evanescence of the guilty, moreover, 
is in no way the reparation of the injustice 
they committed, nor can it become the 
safeguard of the moral order. In a word 
if God were forced to annihilate the guilty^ 
He would acknowledge Himself vanquished 
and after having created the soul immor- 
tal, He would be obliged to abrogate His 
plan, because it was the pleasure of a 
creature, sure of escaping eternal damna- 
tion, to laugh Him to scorn, and, while 
going into nothingness, to blaspheme 
against Him. 

Our opponents object in the name of 
justice : < 'Life, ' ' they say, "is a gift of God ; 
we did not ask for it, nor did we accept it : 
why may we not resign it!" Because life 
is not only a gift and benefit, it is also a 
trial, and God has the strictest right to 
impose it upon us without consultation. 
How, indeed, could we have been consulted 
when we had no being ? Eational as this 
doctrine is, it seems inadmissible to some 
adversaries of eternal retribution, so they 
have revived the theory of restorationism 



80 HEKE AFTER. 

held by Origen and his disciples, according 
to which the punishment ot the impenitent 
is limited and eventually all will be saved. 1 
Universalists 2 profess such a belief. 
Unitarians 3 teach almost the same thing. 

1 Some theologians who claim the existence 
of a temporary hell, deny the existence of pur- 
gatory. What then ? As Perrone remarks (Prae- 
lectiones Theologicae II, 727) "coeperunt negare 
inferni aeternitatem, ut in ejus locum sumciat in- 
fernum temporarium, seu quod idem est purgato- 
rium ; et jam pugnant contra nos pro solo purga- 
torio. Once and always mentita est iniquitas 
sibi. 

2 We believe that there is one God, whose 
nature is love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ 
by one Holy Spirit of grace who will finally 
restore the whole family of mankind to holiness 
and happiness. Profession of Faith, 1803, art. II, 
by H. Iyyon, a study of the sects, p. 160. 

3 "Unitarians oppose the common doctrine of 
everlasting punishment as being hostile to the 
sovereignty, wisdom, justice and mercy of the 
divine Being and also of limiting the redeeming 
power of Christ and his gospel. They believe 
that the object of punishment being reformatory, 
it will only continue until the sinner shall be 
reformed. " Clarke, Man. of Unit, p. 62. 



HEREAFTFR AND PUNISHMENT. 81 

Many Congregationalists x and some Epis- 
copalians 2 doubt eternal punishment. 

This utopia is opposed to reason as well 
as to faith. In order that God may acquit 
the impenitent guilty and that they may 
come to Him, repentance is necessary, for 
pardon granted without repentance would 
be impunity and injustice. Now repent- 
ance is impossible to the damned, because 
their probation having once ended, they no 
longer have either grace or free will. They 
have, indeed, a certain sorrow for their 
misdeeds, but it is a sorrow which has 
nothing in common with repentance, it 
comes from egotism. What they detest is 
not evil but the punishment of evil and an 
unavailing regret for its commission. This 
hypothesis of a temporary hell, likewise 
undermines the moral order, by taking 
away every solid sanction. If, indeed, 
good and evil terminate in exact coales- 
cence, then between these two terms there 

1 Cf. Progressive Orthodoxy by the editors 
of the Andover Review. 

1 Farrar, Eternal Hope ; Mercy and Judge- 
ment. Cf. Row, Future Retribution. 



82 HEREAFTER. 

is no such essential opposition as is usually 
believed, and if the conclusions be the 
same, the principles cannot be very differ- 
ent. And what does a certain number of 
years in hell amount to, if the happiness of 
heaven will some day be attained ? Every- 
thing which passes away and comes to an 
end influences the heart of mankind very 
little. We recall the case of a German 
philosopher who was willing to sacrifice 
two million years of his eternal felicity, for 
the privilege of enjoying a certain kind of 
pleasure: here is an anticipation of what 
the moral order would become, if the 
dreamers of sentimentalism had their way. 

Let us leave those Utopias and believe in 
what the Gospel calls the "great chasm" 1 
which divine justice has fixed between 
heaven and hell. 

"Hell," if we understand its meaning, 
"is sin." 2 This ex£>ression of Bossuet 
helps us to catch a glimpse of the rational 

1 Iyuke XVI, 26. 

2 "Wickedness is sin and sin is damnation. " 
Skakespeare. 



HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 83 

propriety of the Catholic teaching on the 
nature of the pains of hell. God, being 
supremely and infallibly just, proportions 
the pain to the sin, as the effect to the 
cause. Now sin, like every material or 
moral activity, has two terms ; the will 
which commits it, repels God and sub- 
stitutes for Him a perishable good. The 
pain, therefore, must reflect this double 
character, for it is, St. Augustine says, 
"the order of the crime. " Hence the 
necessity of a pain called by theologians 
"the pain of sense, " the philosophic 
reason of which is logically perceived : 
Everything, indeed, even in hell must con- 
cur to the harmony of the general order of 
creation. Now this order has been de- 
ranged by evil : the material creation which 
should help man to reach his end, has been 
violently disturbed from its natural destin- 
ation. Good order requires that it avenge 
itself, as it were, against its disturber and 
unjust tyrant. Since it is impossible for 
all the elements to do this, the providential 
commission will be fulfilled for all by one, 



84 HEREAFTER. 

namely fire, that mysterious power and 
universal force which acts everywhere and 
is concealed under the movements of 
matter. 

In regard to the nature of this fire of 
Hell "which cannot be quenched, " philos- 
ophers and believers may repeat the words 
of St. Augustine: "What will this fire be? 
I believe that nobody knows, unless the 
Divine Spirit reveal it to hirn." Accord- 
ing to some writers the fire is only a 
metaphorical one, representing the horrible 
torments of hell. But the Church has ex- 
plicitly reproved this opinion, 1 and reason 
which looks upon the fire of hell as a 
logical consequence and a natural sequel of 
sin, willingly consents to this censure. 

This fire, the Gospel says, is eternal, it 
will never be quenched ; as salt preserves 
meat, so it will preserve the reprobate 
delivered to vengeance. "As the grass of 

1 According to a decision of the Sacred Pen- 
itentiary, dated April 30, 1890, absolution should 
be refused a penitent who, after being instructed, 
persists in holding that the fire of hell is not real, 
but figurative. 



HEREAFTER AND PUNISHMENT. 85 

the field, though cut by the teeth of the 
animals which feed on it, always revives, 
so will the fire be with the damned." 

In fine to complete this lugubrious de- 
scription let us still mention the "thick 
and deep darkness" (Ps. XL VIII, 20), the 
ardent thirst (Luke XVI, 20), the ever- 
flowing tears (Matt. XXII, 13), the worm 
of remorse and despair, which never dies 
(Mark IX, 43). 

But these are only the least pains of 
hell : the greatest, says Catholic theology, 
is the pain of loss. 

We have seen that the mind and heart 
of man are naturally inclined towards the 
Infinite. For a time they can be seduced 
by the mirage of a perishable good. But 
when probation is over, human nature is 
adjusted to seek, to crave for God alone. 
Disappointment and defeat are met at 
every turn. At the very moment when the 
lost soul should reach the term of its com- 
plete evolution, God repels it. Suspended 
between the supreme good which escapes 
it, and the finite beings which death takes 



86 HEREAFTER. 

from it, it is agitated into an eternal abyss, 
as Pascal says, "quartered between two 
worlds.'' And this contradiction between 
the present state of man and his primal 
destination, this reversal and breaking 
down of all his nature destined for hap- 
piness but now eternally frustrated, is for 
him such an unspeakable torment that the 
genius of St. Augustine cannot translate it 
into human language: "To be separated 
from God," he says, "is a torment as great 
as the very greatness of God." . 

Before this consideration, the question 
proposed by some authors: "Are the 
secondary torments of hell some day to be 
mitigated'?" loses its importance: for, 
according to the remark of St. John Chrys- 
ostom, "what will the damned care for the 
lesser torments since heaven is lost for- 
ever." 

Can we better conclude than by the 
words of Leibnitz: "God who has revealed 
everything necessary to make us fear the 
greatest of calamities, has not revealed all 
that it necessary to make us understand it." 



Chapter VII. 
Hereafter and Reward. 

Philosophy and the End of Man. — The Heaven 
of the Gospel. — The Light of Glory. — The 
Happiness of Heaven. 

It may happen that the soul will not 
have completely apostatized from virtue at 
the end of probation, and yet it may not 
be pure enough to enter upon the enjoy- 
ment of the Sovereign Good. Hence the 
necessity of Purgatory, a rational and con- 
soling dogma the Catholic Church proposes 
to our belief, which was already sketched 
by the Egyptians and Persians and out- 
lined in the works of Plato and Virgil. 

But Purgatory is a place of transition 
only. The soul after purgatorial purifica- 
tion attains a permanent state where it 
reposes in the full harmony of its perfec- 
tions and in the enjoyment of the end of its 
being. 

(87) 



88 HEREAFTER. 

What is this end and what is the sense 
of human life ? 

The rational creature can find its ultimate 
perfection only in the principle of its 
being; for no perfection exists for any 
being whatever, except in union with its 
principle. But man can go to God by 
different routes and be united to Him in 
different ways. 

The only beatitude that reason can pro- 
mise him is one proportionate to his nat- 
ural faculties, that is to say, a clearer view 
of God through created things, a prolonga- 
tion of man's actual knowledge, which is 
able to satisfy the aspirations of the soul. 
Logically we can go no further. If there 
is a higher, a transcendental state of bliss 
in keeping with the faculties raised to the 
supernatural order, reason by itself cannot 
deny the possibility of the fact or demon- 
strate its necessity. 

When, then, rationalists in the name of 
philosophy pretend to know that the end 
of man is u to see God eternally as He is 
and to love Him with the whole heart 



HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 89 

throughout eternity," they arbitrarily en- 
large the domain of reason and the exigen- 
cies of human nature, and they confound 
the natural order and its lawful develop- 
ment with the supernatural order. 

Philosophy leads its pupil as far as the 
frontiers only of the natural order and 
there commits him to a surer guide, who, 
far from obliging him to abdicate his 
reason, demands of him, on the contrary, 
the most fruitful exercise of it, to enter a 
more luminous path for the conquest of a 
new world. 

Paganism had a presentiment of divine 
intervention in the solution of the problem 
of our destiny. Socrates is in vague ex- 
pectation of Him whom Holy Writ calls 
expectatio gentium and the words of Plato 
are too well known to insist upon them: 
"We must choose the best human teach- 
ing, go aboard it as on a raft, and thus with 
some danger cross the river of life, unless 
you can cross more surely on a stronger 
craft, namely, on some divine teaching. " 

The Master for whom the "divine Plato" 



90 HEEEAFTEE 

longed, has come, and the world beyond 
the grave upon which reason could throw 
only a few feeble rays of light is now glori- 
ously radiant with the light of the Cross. 
That Master is Christ Jesus, the Son of 
God: "Never did man speak like this 
man." John VII, 46 

Some truth runs through the humorous 
simile of Luther : "The human mind is like 
a drunken man on horseback ; if you raise 
it on one side, it falls down the other." 

Truth is generally found between the ex- 
tremes, and in the question at hand it is 
found between the reveries of idealism and 
the lewdness of sensuality. 

Mahomet promises to his followers a 
sensual paradise well-padded and quilted 
and provided with all possible enjoyments. 

Plato went higher; for him the happiness 
of heaven is the fruit of the activity of the 
mind and the enjoyment of the Absolute 
Good ; but as his absolute good is only an 
ideal distinct from God, it is difficult to 
imagine what the philosopher means. For 
Renan, beatitude consists in the "worship 



HEKEAFTEK AND EEWAED. 91 

of the ideal" since his god is "the category 
of the ideal." 

The Catholic definition of the beatitude 
of heaven has been given by the Council of 
Florence : intueri dare ipsum Deum trinum 
et imam ut est. 

What can be more simple and sublime ? 
Our faculties are invincibly attracted to- 
wards a mysterious and perfect term. 
This ideal which they follow, recedes even 
to 'the infinite which alone can satisfy 
them. And as the infinite is only God, 
beatitude consists in possessing Him as 
He is. 

In this world we have only remote man- 
ifestations of God, divinitatis fulgurationes 
as Leibnitz says ; He is concealed behind 
a cloud from which He speaks in the enig- 
matic language of faith, per speculum in 
enigmate. In heaven, on the contrary, 
without the need of space and without a 
veil, face to face, facie ad faciem; we shall 
penetrate the abyss of His being, the mys- 
teries of His intimate life and the fruitful 
harmony of His indissoluble unity in the 
adorable Trinity of persons. 



92 HEREAFTER. 

Here below truth comes subdivided by 
our narrow conceptions and the highest 
genius is hardly able to explore a corner 
of the universe and say a few words on its 
mysteries. There we shall contemplate 
Truth which is the source of all truth and 
contains the eternal reason of things ; we 
shall embrace in a mighty synthesis the 
ensemble of beings, from the infinitesimal 
atom to the worlds which shine throughout 
sidereal space — matter with all its 
forces and laws, the mind with its great 
manifestations, the designs and plans of 
Providence over men and nations — the 
finite and infinite in their indefinable rela- 
tion and intercourse. 

Here below the human heart has only 
rare, incomplete and transient enjoyment; 
to love is often to suffer. There all good 
gathered and personified in the Absolute 
will communicate itself to the soul and as 
a torrent, sicut torrens ab austro, will pour 
into it ; the abyss of the human heart will 
be filled to the top; "I shall be satisfied 
when the glory shall appear, " Ps. XVI, 



HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 93 

15, "They shall be inebriated with the 
plenty of thy house, and thou shalt make 
them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure' ? 
Ps. XXXV, 9. 

If now created things have for us so 
much seduction, what will the Creator be? 
If the echoes are so harmonious, what will 
the voice be ! If the reflection is so beauti- 
ful, what will the center of light be? If 
we fall on our knees before this transient 
apparition of the infinite called the Sublime, 
what will be our ecstasy before His radiant 
manifestation in the first rays of the eter- 
nal day ? 

One day St. Augustine by a supreme 
effort of his genius and a sudden leap of 
his heart felt, as it were, the Infinite and 
he received that "wound of love and 
truth 7 7 which never closed. 

What, then, will be the eternal ecstasies 
of the mind and heart in the "city" where 
God is the light contemplated without 
shadow and the love embracing in an eter- 
nal transport those predestined beings to 
whom He gives Himself and from whose 



94 HEREAFTER. 

eyes He wipes away all tears! (Apoc. 
XXI, 4.) 

At the prospect of this indefinible glory, 
human speech should hold its lips and con- 
fess that "eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, neither hath it entered into the 
heart of man, what things God hath pre- 
pared for them that love him" I Cor. 
II, 9. 

Bui here a difficulty presents itself. 
God "^ihabiteth light inaccessible" says 
St. Paul (I. Tim. VI, 16). Between the 
infinite and our faculties, great as you may 
suppose their natural development to be, 
there is an incommensurable dispropor- 
tion. How will it be filled! St. Thomas 
gives a luminous answer to that question : 
"Xo being," he says, "is raised to a con- 
dition which excels its nature, unless it be 
prepared by a special disposition for this 
condition." As the infinite is beyond the 
grasp of the finite, the human intellect 
must be raised to a superhuman state, to 
embrace the infinite. This is the effect of 
a superior quality which is a participation 



HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 95 

of the very light of God and which theolog- 
ians call "the light of glory." It is, as it 
were, the sense of the divine; it may be 
compared to an instrument which widens 
the field and enlarges the scope of the eye, 
or to a divine engraftment upon the wild 
stock of human nature, in order to make 
it produce acts superior to its natural con- 
dition. 

In seeing God, says St. John, we shall 
become deiform. "When he shall appear, 
we shall be like to him, because we shall 
see him as he is." (I. John III, 2.) 

Here is a mystery, but not an absurdity. 
"If God," says Monsabre, "has made a 
law of natural optics which proportions 
the small point of our eye called the retina, 
to vast spaces, I do not see what can pre- 
vent Him from making a law of super- 
natural optics which proportions our in- 
tellect to embrace the infinite. ' 7 

It must be said, however, that this im- 
mediate seeing of God is not comx^rehen- 
sive, i. e. it does not exhaust the infinite. 
To comprehend, indeed, is to equal; only 



96 HEREAFTER. 

the infinite can compenetrate the depth of 
the infinite. Just as human language is 
not able to define God, because He trans- 
cends the frame of our definitions, so the 
human intellect is not able to embrace 
Him entirely because He is greater than 
our thoughts. 

It is clear that the enjoyment of the In- 
finite by the human soul in no way resem- 
bles immobility or a slumber approaching 
annihilation. This fantastic conception of 
the future life supposes that joy is the con- 
sequence of inertia and that activity neces- 
sarily produces fatigue and pain ; nothing 
is more erroneous ; even in this life pleas- 
ure is the consequence of a well-regulated 
activity and many philosophers teach with 
Pascal that true happiness is found in the 
exercise of thought, whence the soul re- 
ceives ineffable consolations. Aristotle 
had already understood that God's enjoy- 
ment comes from acting, our supreme 
pleasure from thinking. Activity, in fact, 
is essential to life and beatitude. Far from 
being an arrest of life, activity is its 
apogee. 



HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 97 

Now if a series of vital operations is 
necessary to enjoy the true and the good 
as they appear imperfect in this world, 
shall we not need to display a wonderful 
activity to contemplate the true in its 
source and fulness $ 

The true God is not, indeed, an empty 
formula, an abstract conception, a mental 
product without being or reason ; He is an 
active, personal, living Being, or rather 
He is Pure Act by excellence, the very 
Life which without pain or effort spon- 
taneously communicates itself to the en- 
raptured intellect. 

The ancients could not fancy a happiness 
at once perfect and eternal and they con- 
ceived the future life as another edition 
with the common accidents and pastimes 
of the present one. Thus Plato considers 
that each soul, accustomed to live among 
changes, will finish by becoming fatigued 
with the contemplation of truth and sooner 
or later will commence a new existence in 
this world. He could not dispossess him- 
self of the idea that the conditions of the 



98 HEREAFTER. 

present life and the future will be absolut- 
ely different. 

Progress, of course, is the law of every 
being which has not yet reached the aim of 
its existence. But the inhabitants of heaven 
have reached their term, i. e. they have 
attained final perfection; they cannot, 
then, be subject any longer to the same 
laws as we, unless man would be con- 
demned to run always after an end which 
does not exist and his aim would be to 
have no aim. 

Will variety, then, be lacking? No, for 
God, in whom the Trinity of persons does 
not alter the unity of His nature, is at the 
same time the principle of the unity of 
beings and of the variety which shines 
forth in all creation. It is this "Beauty 
ever ancient ever new' 7 which "never 
ceases to teach the elect who will always 
be eager to learn and to draw from their 
measureless treasure." And so, St. Paul 
says, they go from glory to glory, a clari- 
tate in claritatem. Hence their joy which 
no man can take from them and which is 



HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 99 

expressed in the spontaneous cry of the 
heart: forever and forever! "Eternity," 
says Bossuet, "is in the essence of love." 
How, indeed, even reason can ask, could 
the elect enjoy their felicity, if they felt, 
hanging over their head, a threat or danger 
of a final catastrophe in which they would 
founder forever *? 

* 
A question has been raised which has 
peculiar interest for the human heart: 
"Will the blessed recognize one another in 
heaven?" Yes, reason and faith answer 
together. In heaven as on earth man is 
essentially a social being; since in the 
future life he keeps his perfect identity and 
the consciousness of this identity, he holds, 
also, his legitimate affections of family and 
friendship. The river of Oblivion (Aeffy) 
at which the poets of old made their dead 
drink, upon entering the kingdom of 
shadows is a pagan dream. Heaven is, 
according to Holy Writ, a kingdom and a 
city, therefore a society; now is there a 
society if the members do not know one 
another % 



.ofC. 



100 HEREAFTER. 

Besides, St. Augustine asks, will the 
elect be less loving because they have 
become better! No, grace crowns nature 
without injuring it : we can keep the hope 
living in our hearts of meeting our friends 
in eternity, after parting from them in 
time. If those who have titles to that 
love, make themselves unworthy of it, the 
happiness of the elect will not be disturbed 
by that fact. In heaven, says St. Thomas, 
God is the measure of the affections, and if 
in this world the beauty of a creature can 
deaden the deepest love, will not all 
regrets disappear in the unspeakable en- 
joyment of the possession of the Infinite. 
Faith, anticipating our desires, adds that 
the body, for the perfection of this joy, 
will be endowed with higher qualities in 
keeping with its new condition, and will 
participate in the felicity of the soul, after 
having been associated in its trials. 

This dogma of the resurrection of the 
body is no more opposed to reason than 
any other Christian dogma. Says St. 
Thomas: u In the midst of the vivifying 



HEREAFTER AND REWARD. 101 

whirlwind which incessantly carries away 
the atoms of our body, the soul remains 
and unifies the body and gives to it human 
form : why later on will the soul not be 
able to exercise again its formative in- 
fluence V J So, the elect will find them- 
selves whole and in perfect identity on the 
threshold of eternity; their soul will always 
exercise its sublime functions and their 
body will shine with an incorruptible 
beauty. 

Faith and reason seem also to agree that 
the blessed will not spend eternity in a 
state of immobility. 

Earth, an imperceptible atom in creation, 
was for them the place of trial, but sidereal 
space holding an infinity of other worlds 
like our sun, will be the place of their 
eternal triumph ; Si cut scintilla in arundineto 
discurrent. There will be unfolded the 
majestic economy of the divine plan, in 
which all creation converges to man. This 
is that incomparable destiny on which 
Bossuet displays his magnificent style: 
"Eternal felicity/' he says, "is a glory 



102 HEREAFTER. 

more solid than that admired by men, a 
grandeur more sure than that depending 
on wealth, an immortality more certain 
than that promised by history, a hope 
better supported than that offered by this 
world.' 7 



CONCLUSION. 

A contemporary author writes : i 'Civili- 
zation, society and ethics are as a pair of 
beads whose chain is the immortality of 
the soul ; take away the chain and every- 
thing falls. " 

And the chain having been removed, 
the beads go astray. Can anything dur- 
able, indeed, be founded on an indefinite 
"perhaps" or u who knows" ? Thus the 
three Kantian questions are asked today 
more than ever : "Who am I? What must 
I do? For what may I hope % ? ' And in 
the midst of the philosophical disorder 
and through the debris of the systems 
which darken the horizon of the twentieth 
century, the Christian ideal shines as the 
rising of the day after the darkness of the 
night. Sincere souls turn toward the 
religious idea, toward that intellectual 
light full of love, of which Dante sings : 

"Luce intellectual piena d'amore 
Amor di vero ben pien di letizia." 

They go back to the two fundamental 

truths which even the French revolution- 

(103) 



104 HEREAFTER. 

ists acclaimed through Robespierre: the 
existence of God and the immortality of 
the soul. 

But men of learning do not content 
themselves with looking at the Catholic 
religion from the outside; timidly they 
open the door, not yet to enter, but to ad- 
mire the powerful architecture of our Cath- 
olic dogmas. 

Unanimous in seeing in these truly 
Christian ideas the source of the purest, of 
the beautiful, may they go so far as to 
recognize our religion as the principle of 
good and the necessary basis of private 
and public morality. May this movement 
to the faith of their ancestors grow stronger, 
wider and more fruitful and may it bring 
back those wandering minds to a sane phil- 
osophy and the true religion. There they 
will be taught how to travel through life 
with the light of the Christian ideal and to 
enter eternity with the cross of Christ in 
their hand and His love in their heart. 

The End. 






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